A blog mainly about odd German 45 rpm records. New records every Thursday.

In time for the start of the Olympic games in Beijing here is a record that was made for the Olympic games in Munich in 1972. Once again I bought this in the little thrift-store in the street where I live for 50 cents.

I didn`t know what it was and just picked it out of curiosity. Luckily the record came with a 40-page booklet (in German and English) that answered most of my questions .

Apparently the record was only a small part of a very ambitious project: a multi-media play/performance/opera for speakers, singers, choirs, two pop groups, actors, technicians, projections, films, big plastic works and multi-channel sound tapes that took place August 26. to September 9. 1972 at the site of the Olympic games in Munich.

The play “Hymnus 2 – Tomorrow after the fire” was made by composer Dieter Schönbach and director Pavel Blumenfeld who had collaborated on similar projects before. Schönbach is widely regarded as Germany`s leading exponent of multi-media art starting in the mid-sixties. The sleeve was designed by artist Edmund Kieselbach who also collaborated with Schönbach.

The two most striking things about the record and the booklet however are the inclusion of krautrockers “Joy Unlimited” and the highly political content.

“A resistance movement begins with nothing or almost nothing, it is barely more than a band at first or a remote, isolated commune, and needs time, plenty of time until it grows into a state, and, at the end, into the state.”

The guys who made this had a lot of balls bringing leftist politics and straight-forward criticism of Capitalism onto a big stage and to an audience that needed to hear the message the most: unsuspecting people who wanted to see the Olympic games. On top of that they managed to get big companies like Kodak and Aral to finance the project and Polydor to release the record. Things were different in 1972…

“Joy Unlimited” are well known for recording a seminal krautrock LP with “Joy Fleming”. This is the band after Joy left. There is no information however who exactly played in the “Multi-Media Band”. The cool thing though is that they set Allen Ginsberg`s famous 50s beat-poems “Holy Holy” and “Racks” to music.

About me:
My name is Andreas Michalke. I´m a cartoonist from Berlin, Germany and I like collecting records. Most of the records I find in thrift stores or at flea markets here in Berlin. I like a lot of music but I thought I`d focus on odd German records. Preferably with cartoon covers.
All my scans are high-resolution. If you double-click on them they will get much bigger.

1. I will not use material, that is already available in digital format elsewhere.

2.The artists I present are either anonymous or pseudonymous or dead or no longer active.

3. I feel that if nobody has cared to reissue a record in 50 years, it is fair to present it.

Note: Please don´t ask for re-ups. I don´t have time for that. What´s gone is gone.